During the manufacture of media such as photographic paper, defects can occur on the media. Manufactured media can be inspected on a master roll before it is slit into finished rolls at a manufacturing site or can be manually inspected at a photofinishing or printing site by inspecting completed prints. It is noted that defects in the media made at manufacture will show up on completed prints in the form of defects in the images, and consequently, these defective prints have to be manually removed and reprinted to provide for a corrected image. The inspection of a master roll at a manufacturing site will detect manufacturing defects, but cannot detect defects that are introduced later in slitting, printing or processing operations. Manual inspection of the finished prints at a photofinishing site may detect the above defects, but it is time consuming and inefficient, and depends on the reliability of an operator.
Conventional digital imaging systems utilize digital data and specifically, digital images on a screen, for the purposes of manipulating the image or blending multiple images. However, conventional digital imaging systems do not provide for an automatic print inspection method which can be utilized as a final product quality check to detect defective finished prints.